Hundreds of former residents of juvenile detention centers are accusing the state and Cook County of failing to protect them from “persistent and prevalent” sexual abuse by employees in youth prisons across Illinois in another set of sweeping lawsuits.

Over two hundred people who passed through the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center as adolescents say the facility's guards, teachers and other staff members took sexual advantage of them.

More than 200 men and women allege they were sexually abused as children while in custody at youth detention centers in Illinois

A scathing new lawsuit accuses Cook County and Illinois state employees of sexually abusing children held in detention facilities. The complaints are 410 pages long altogether—and the details of what 272 men and women say happened to them in juvenile custody are unsettling.

Survivors of child sex abuse at juvenile detention facilities in Illinois are hoping for justice. Hundreds of people have alleged they were abused as children while incarcerated at detention facilities across the state.

At a news conference Tuesday, lawyers said the men and women were sexually abused as children in youth facilities run by the State of Illinois and Cook County. Shardaa Gray reports.

New lawsuits were filed Monday adding to the hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse within Illinois' juvenile detention system.